Dick Stanley, after avoiding Game of Thrones as assiduously as I do, binged on the first season, and has come to the following conclusion:

The best thing about the series, as the fellow who wrote the introduction to the first book puts it, is the way it proves that no one in their right mind would want to live in medieval times. Even the rich then barely lived above the level of our lower middle class. Their faces are always dirty because they never bathe. The usual Hollywood incongruity of all those impeccably straight white teeth looks even more ridiculous. And instead of focusing on the sorcery, the story shows the real evil to be the people of the times. The powerless as well as the powerful.

And he finds one connection to contemporary times. (No, I won’t spoil it for you.)